an tSionna {Oil}

This is an hourly chart of crude oil futures that shows a vicious rally that's occurred over the past few days.  Trough to peak, crude rallied a bit over 22%.  Hard to know at this point whether this is simply a counter trend rally in a bear market or the beginning of something else.  I do know that the energy space as represented by their ETFs {which for those energy related ETFs we cover in our investment universe all look about the same right now on their charts} quit going down in December.  Most of these look something like the XLE below.

Look, I'm not saying this space is ready to trade higher right now. We could for all we know be in a trading range and it's very possible that energy has simply traded back to resistance on it's chart.     Yet, Oil related equities and by extension their ETFs will usually bottom in price before the price of crude so all of this bears watching.  We already have an energy related strategy in place for our clients as part of the game plan.  Given what happened here last year, we think these are names that bear watching in the coming weeks.  

Charts are from FINVIZ.com.  

*Long energy related ETFs in client and personal accounts.  Where we are long these names is dependent on our specific investment strategies and client risk/reward parameters.